


Passing of an Era

by Sharpiefan



Category: Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 03:44:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharpiefan/pseuds/Sharpiefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Sarlania's AoS Painting Challenge on LJ. Based on the picture of <a href="http://danspira.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/turner_j_m_w_-_the_fighting_temeraire_tugged_to_her_last_berth_to_be_broken.jpg">The Fighting Temeraire</a> by J.M.W. Turner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing of an Era

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shades of Glory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/206606) by [idler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idler/pseuds/idler). 



> Contains spoilers for the novel Lord Hornblower. Partially inspired by Shades of Glory by Idler.
> 
> I do not own any of the canon characters, I merely have fun writing about them. I do not profit in any way from such activities.

He wasn't sure at first why he'd come. This wasn't like the glorious launching of a new ship, flags flying, music playing, people cheering. This was altogether a far more solemn occasion, far more comparable to a funeral than a wedding.

There was nobody else standing on the cliff-top, watching as the squat menacing shape of the steam-tug made its way to the breaker's yard. His eye wasn't on the tug, however, but on what it was towing.

A regal vessel in comparison. Almost ethereal in the strange evening glow that promised a storm before too long. She had seen many storms in her forty years of life. Many storms, aye, and not all of them caused by Nature. She had been there at the Nile and again at the most famous battle of them all, one that was still talked of now: Trafalgar.

It didn't take much for him to remember the sights and sounds – and smells – of a ship in battle. The roar of the cannon, the much smaller pop of the Marines' muskets. The shouting. The creaking of the ships. The sound of cannon-balls thumping into the ship's side, with the resulting screams of those unlucky enough to get hit by the splinters thus caused.

He shouldn't be here. This wasn't his ship that he was watching. She'd never been his. He turned to go, and turned back. He couldn't go. He owed this to a friend who couldn't be here. A friend who had served on this vessel.

He owed it to her men – to all those men who had fought and died in ships like this all over the world, so that people could sing 'Rule Britannia' and know that it was nothing more than plain, simple truth. Those people didn't care. They would never come to see the passing of the old days, the old ways, content with the new. He felt nothing for them, not even contempt. They were far removed from the old days, though removed in fact by only a few years. A few years – a few seconds were enough to change lives.

He still remembered the explosion that had claimed his friend's life. The waiting. The aching realisation that never again would he hear the step, thump of his friend pacing the quarterdeck. He was here for his friend. Not himself at all, though there was something beyond an age-old friendship that had drawn him here.

He didn't even remember how he'd heard about this. Maybe it was no more than a feeling that he should come down to the cliff-top this evening, despite the threatened storm. There was certainly no reason for him to have put on his uniform. Not the uniform of the modern Navy, but his old, sea-going rig, that would not look out of place on the quarterdeck of the solemn lady in front of him, her graceful masts and spars towering over the ugly black funnel of the tug. He remembered his friend talking about how shameful it was to see her top-hamper replaced by the ugly, heavy construction that marked a prison hulk, and was glad she had been recommissioned, even for a short a time as it had been.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, though there was nobody there. “They that go down to the sea in ships,” he seemed to hear someone say, and nodded, all unaware.

“A beautiful lady,” he murmured to himself, watching until the tug towed her round the promontory and he could no longer see even her topmasts.

And as he turned to go, finally, there was a low rumble of thunder and he felt the first few drops of rain. Hornblower's cheeks felt damp, and it was not the rain that made them so. _Téméraire_ symbolised so much, not least, the passing of an era.

“We shall not see her like again,” Bush's ghost whispered on the wind, and he nodded.


End file.
